From the moment Max W. Talbott became a part of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, he was facing potential conflicts of interest.

Talbott, an Austin health product consultant and former official with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, applied for a position with the tech fund in June 2009.

One month later, he was hired by Pulmotect Inc., a Houston startup venture. Pulmotect had received $250,000 from the tech fund, but could get up to $1 million if it retained a regulatory consultant. That was to be Talbott’s job.

Then in September 2009, Gov. Rick Perry announced he had named Talbott to the tech fund’s 17-member advisory committee, which recommends how millions of dollars should be spent to help startup firms.

Pulmotect, with Talbott as its consultant, won approval for an additional $750,000 from the tech fund within three months.

In January 2010, another startup hired Talbott — a Houston firm known as Apaxis Medical Inc. Like Pulmotect, Apaxis Medical had received $250,000 from the tech fund, but was in line for more if it hired a regulatory consultant. That again was Talbott’s position.

By early this year, Apaxis had received $600,000 from the tech fund.

The increased funding for both companies was approved while Talbott was under contract to the firms, and while he was serving on the tech fund committee.

Talbott’s situation is another in a series of ethical issues involving the tech fund, which is administered by the governor’s office. Fund awards have gone to firms with ties to Perry’s political donors, and a state audit cited a need for more transparency and oversight, as well as the existence of financial conflicts of interest.

There are no accusations that Talbott broke any laws or violated the governor’s conflict-of-interest policy.

Talbott said he recused himself when Pulmotect and Apaxis Medical received additional money. “I think that the record fully reflects that I never was a paid consultant for any company that appeared before the ETF or who received an ETF award after I joined the committee in 2009,” Talbott told The Dallas Morning News in an email.

The governor’s office provided The News with an email from Talbott and a letter from a staff attorney saying he had recused himself on matters related to Apaxis Medical. It produced no records related to the advisory committee’s votes on Apaxis Medical. Nothing was provided to The News regarding Pulmotect.

A report by the governor’s office said Talbott’s work for Pulmotect included running a clinical trial in Mexico. As a consultant for Apaxis Medical, Talbott approached his former employer, the FDA, to seek approval for a medical device.

Talbott eventually had business ties to at least four companies that received money from the tech fund while he served on the advisory committee.

He was on the committee when Convergen Lifesciences Inc. was awarded $4.5 million last year. Talbott was listed on a document reviewed by a regional vetting group as among Convergen’s “key project advisors.”

Convergen is led by David G. Nance, whom Perry appointed to the advisory committee in 2005. At the time, Nance was president and chief executive officer of Introgen Therapeutics Inc.

Talbott was a senior vice president at Introgen, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after the FDA rejected the company’s application to license a cancer therapy.

In an email to The News, Talbott said he was “never a paid consultant” to Convergen. He did not respond to questions about whether he recused himself from the advisory’s committee deliberations on its award. He also would not discuss whether he disclosed his work for Convergen to the governor’s office.

The governor’s office also wouldn’t answer those questions.

Talbott also was on the tech fund panel when Perry announced in September 2010 that AuricX Pharmaceuticals Inc. would get up to $1 million. The firm was founded by Chicago-based Wildcat Venture Management, which lists Talbott as senior vice president of regulatory affairs-strategic relationships.

Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit liberal advocacy group, provided The News with governor’s office emails about Talbott and the tech fund; the group obtained them under the Texas Public Information Act. The News later obtained the same emails and additional records from the governor’s office, including Talbott’s application to participate in the tech fund.

“The governor’s cronies have treated hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars as a personal piggy bank,” said Andrew Wheat, research director for Texans for Public Justice. “The Legislature must either eliminate ETF, or contain it, at last, in a tamper-proof bottle.”